The Ten-Step Process to Enlightenment

How convenient it would be, if we could pick up the ten-step process to enlightenment, study it thoroughly so we know exactly what to do, have a teacher we trust who tells us exactly how long it will take if we do this method, and off we go, with determination on a straight path to the promise of never ending happiness on the horizon.

But the spiritual journey doesn’t quite work like this. Most of us will find out rather quickly that it is far from linear.

Many of us these days have very sudden awakening moments. Quick leaps into temporary liberation. It can happen when in satsang, reading a book like the Power of Now from Eckhart Tolle, or when thrown into a 10 day Vipassana meditation experience, that we find ourselves launched into an expanded state of consciousness for the first time. A peak human experience that might remind us of how we felt as a kid, times we were in love, or an experience of MDMA at a music festival.

Here we wake up from the continuous cloud of thought, time and ego, into the realization that thought, time or ego were never real. While the experience possibly confuses or frightens us, if the revelation is truly there, a literal weight drops off our shoulders. The mind turns lucid, our sensory experience becomes more vivid and colorful, and we see the world with new eyes. It brings us hope, a trust that life is here to support us, and there is the sensation of being lighter than ever before. Confident, innocent, renewed and inspired. We smile at the world, and the world smiles back at us. There is alignment, there is flow, there is ease.

But gradually, this initial high of our first awakening begins to wear off, and the rising energy begins to slow down. We might not want to acknowledge it, and we will likely try to hold onto the high. Until we are more and more blatantly getting faced again with unresolved emotional processes that seek our attention.

At first, they are subtle enough to be ignored. Yet before we know it, they accumulate into something heavy and dense, and like an airplane that stalls, gravity returns, and the descent sets back in. We find ourselves slapped in the face with a challenging situation, and we plummet back to previous versions of ourselves, ones that we hoped to never return to, and come face to face with our deeper dormant pains, fears and insecurities.

If it wasn’t clear to us yet already, and if we aren’t too stuck in stubbornness or arrogance, this moment shows us that there is purification work to do. That we have a storage of unresolved karma, patterns and tendencies, that - although completely out of the picture for some time - did not leave us in our temporary liberation. Having tasted the truth and bliss of being temporarily liberated, there is no going back to life as it was before - the path forward is to truth, and the obstacles will have to be faced.

This first taste of liberation is what pulls us forward. It is a craving not unlike any other craving, yet this craving feels wholesome. For the first time in our lives we discover something that is truly important, something that seems to be able to provide a real answer and solution to existential questions. And so the seeking has begun. Where is the answer that can help us stabilize into this blissful consciousness? Which book, which tradition, which meditation, which shaman?

It can all be rather confusing at this point, with all the endless options in the spiritual marketplace, endless philosophies, and endless courses, often contradicting each other. We ask ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, without having quite the full vocabulary for it yet, what the balance is between transcendence, and being a human with desires and emotions. We don't understand the balance between being engaged with life, opposed to being detached and enlightened (whatever our imagination of this word is at this point).

We find ourselves confused on what to do when people treat us bad, whether we should try to meditate it all away, because we understand now that our triggers say more about us than about anything else. Where is the line?

We wonder if it still makes sense to pursue any worldly ambition, and whether a monk or a meditator in a cave is helpful for the planet. Who is going to clean up the ocean and grow our food if we would all just meditate all day? These questions will stay with us, with ever evolving revelations and insights, and if we truly grow wise, with less and less conclusions along the way.

As we continue walking, we find ourselves revisiting elevated states of mind, temporary periods of liberation, but also greater valleys. It is like everything is now amplified. Our numbness has made place for a deeper intimacy with life than ever before. Our romantic relationships are more profound, a simple walk at sunset or the sight of the moon can bring tears to our eyes, and our personal journals become more poetic. Inspiring creative ideas bubble inside, visions come to us, and projects want to be birthed.

But with this heightened sensitivity and energy, we also begin to feel all the subtle and not so subtle pains that we’ve carried. We access old memories, and realize the blockages in our body and mind. The unspoken feelings and distortions in relationships. The misalignments in our life choices. A direct effect of our awakening is that it all can no longer be ignored.

Instead of a linear path, we discover a very non-linear path, and in some ways one that is cyclical. We discover a wise inner elder inside of us that our friends and colleagues ask for counseling, and at other times a hopeless and reactive inner child with little control over its emotions. We move through periods of deep alignment, expansion and flow, and periods that ask us to retreat and be still and let parts of us die. We notice that these inner winters and summers are cyclical. And that through the ups and downs, the cycle does move ever more upward into ever expanding spirals of awakening. While also spiralling deeper and deeper into the earth, into the body, into more and more grounding.

Instant moments of liberation string together, and like this they form the path. We awaken and unawaken here and now, and we do that many, many times, over and over. We pierce through the clouds, and we fall back, we come up for air, and we drown. For longer and longer periods we learn to fly. We are both on a direct path, and a progressive path, at the same time. And we are not on a path at all. We are the path. Our awakening turns us inside out, and we see that the path moves through us.

Perhaps it could be helpful, that our first awakening comes with a little disclaimer. Be ready, this is not the end. This is a never-ending beginning. Ups and downs will come. There is no escape, they are the way. As Rumi said "If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?"